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June Simson embraces her cat, Sammi, after finding him in the wreckage of her home on May 21 in Moore, Okla.

After a monstrous tornado tore through the suburbs of Oklahoma City earlier this week, residents are now returning home to pick up what remains of their lives. Entire neighborhoods were rendered unrecognizable by the powerful EF-5 tornado, which killed 24 people, 9 of them children.

Two small dogs rest on a table surrounded by debris as residents search for valuables in the wreckage on May 21.

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Photo: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

Battered yet resilient

Derick Brock (right) from Mercy Chefs, a nonprofit organization that provides meals to victims of natural disasters, helps a man fold an American flag found in the debris of a house devastated by the tornado.